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It takes all kinds of critters to make Farmer Vincent fritters! cackle the brother-and-sister team behind the finest smoked meats in the county. They also run the friendly Motel Hello (the o in the neon sign sometimes goes on the blink), and no matter how many times you ve seen Psycho or The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, you can be sure that everything will be perfectly above board here as Vincent s brother Bruce is the local sheriff.

Western veteran Rory Calhoun gives a lipsmackingly demented performance as Farmer Vincent, whose twinkling bonhomie conceals a deeply depraved secret.

Directed by Kevin Connor (maker of much-loved British genre classics The Land That Time Forgot and Warlords of Atlantis) and with legendary DJ Wolfman Jack as a fire-and-brimstone TV preacher, this is a gleefully twisted horror-comedy that climaxes with a showstopping chainsaw duel.

• High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) and Standard Definition DVD presentation of the film Optional English SDH subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• Audio commentary with director Kevin Connor moderated by Calum Waddell
• Another Head on the Chopping Block: Interview with star Paul Linke
• From Glamour to Gore: Interview with co-star, and former Playboy Playmate, Rosanne Katon
• Ida, Be Thy Name: A look back at Motel Hell s frightful female protagonist Ida Smith and the secrets of creating a convincing slasher siren, with Scream Queens Elissa Dowling and Chantelle Albers, genre commentator Staci Layne Wilson and critic Shelagh Rowan-Legg
• Back to the Backwoods: Director Dave Parker (The Hills Run Red) speaks about the importance of Motel Hell
• Original Trailer
• Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Jeff Zornow
• Collector's booklet featuring new writing on the film by Kim Newman, illustrated with original archive stills and posters, plus Motel Hell comic book extracts and exclusive interview with artist Chris Moreno

You're doing the world a service, DarkImbecile

Just imagine the existential catastrophe of stumbling through life and not being made aware of this film

This one’s actually okay. Ebert even infamously gave it a positive review!

My review from a few years back:

Having made the much-loved British genre entries The Land That Time Forgot (1974), At the Earth's Core/i] (1976) and i]Warlords of Atlantis (1978), director Kevin Connor decamped to America for this lacquer-black comedy set in and around the Motel Hello (the 'o' at the end of its neon sign is faulty), run by the jovial Farmer Vincent and his sister Ida who are renowned far and wide for the quality of their smoked meats. Since the poster tagline is "It takes all kinds of critters to make Farmer Vincent fritters", the source of his product will come as a surprise only to the kind of innocent maiden aunts who really shouldn't be watching films like this in the first place, but what it lacks in suspense it more than compensates in lipsmackingly lurid set-pieces (a particular highlight being the swingers' party accompanied by Wolfman Jack as an onscreen TV preacher: "Remember, we are all God's tools"), culminating in a showstopping chainsaw duel. Above all, Western veteran Rory Calhoun's silver-haired, black-browed, jovially demented Vincent is exactly what a film like this needs as he charms assorted sceptical authority figures into accepting his wildly implausible claims (he tells the sheriff that he buried a road accident victim rather than report the incident because "the body wasn't... intact. I'm doing the coroner a favour!"). Some of the comedy is a more than a tad obvious (you know exactly what's going to happen when a minibus driver says "we gotta find a place to crash"), and Nina Axelrod's Terri (a would-be victim to whom Vincent takes a shine) is offensively dim even by the debased standards of sexpot blonde screamers - but I remember this deservedly going down a storm at one of the Scala Cinema's legendary all-day all-night exploitation fests back in the 1980s, and it stands up pretty well 33 years on.

It also feels quite influenced by Tobe Hooper, in that it has the general setting of 1976's Eaten Alive but mixed with the cannibalism/chainsaw angle of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre! In a way it is the more obviously expected sequel to Texas Chain Saw Massacre than Eaten Alive Was!

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MichaelB wrote: Sun Apr 21, 2019 9:01 am ... I remember this deservedly going down a storm at one of the Scala Cinema's legendary all-day all-night exploitation fests back in the 1980s, and it stands up pretty well 33 years on.

I can absolutely see how watching this with a rowdy midnight madness crowd would be the best possible way to experience it; it was enjoyable enough for its kooky mix of humor and grotesque horror by myself in the middle of the afternoon, but so many of its better moments would play really well with an amenable crowd. An audience primed to enjoy itself might also help some of the saggier segments go down more smoothly — you wouldn't think the mechanics of planting people in the ground, cutting out their vocal cords, and force feeding them through snorkels would drag after awhile, but...

I most appreciated that the film fully commits to its black comedy by refusing us a fully sympathetic character — Terry, the young woman with amazing taste in men, is written and played as dumb as a post, while it's only when the sheriff "hero" is jealous that the girl he tries to sexually assault prefers his older brother that he bothers to discover that his sibling is a mass murdering cannibal. The moment early on where Calhoun's character 'calms down' the hysterical twin girls — who look like a parallel universe version of the twins from The Shining, also released in 1980 — made me laugh out loud, the recurring TV evangelists are a nice touch, and the zombie attack aesthetics of the freed 'animals' toward the end was a funny punchline. The final set piece is appropriately over-the-top, and that final line from Calhoun really is perfect.

Even giving the film all the benefits of all possible doubts and enjoying it for what it is, I think Ebert's contemporaneous rating of a 2.5-star just-barely-over-the-line recommendation is about right. This is the kind of film that could in right hands make for a fun remake — perhaps with just slightly (very, very slightly) higher aims that looked even more critically at the contrast between the backwoods locals and their out-of-town prey, or at the religiosity of the characters and their culture — as long as it didn't tip over into Eli Roth-style sadism and ultraviolence.

Anyway, this is on Amazon Prime for free right now, and worth the 90 minutes for anyone in the mood to watch (especially with some game friends) some drive-in horror that is at least mostly aware of its trashy absurdity.

I get what you mean, but Ebert graded on a four star scale and gave this three stars. 2.5 was considered a negative rating (marginal thumbs down)

I've long had a soft spot for Motel Hell which I first saw on a double bill with Gordon Willis' Windows in January 1981. It also has some of horrors best lines like 'Meats meat and man's gotta eat' & 'It takes all types of critters to make farmer Vincent's fritters'. The film also made me a lifelong fan of Nancy Parsons.